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(c) Mui-tsais who have reached the age of 18 are at liberty to leave their employment at once. Those below that age must be restored to their parents at once, either on their own demand or on that of their parents, without any payment. Mui-tsais between the ages of 12 and 18 whose parents or guardians cannot be found and who wish to leave their employ- ment must be allowed to apply to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs to find them other employment. It will be necessary to provide that they must take up such employment as the Secretary for Chinese Affairs considers suitable for them. Girls below the age of 12, whose parents cannot be found, should be required to stay with their present employers except in cases of cruelty when they should be sent to the Po Leung Køk until some suitable arrangement can be made for them.
(d) Mui-tsais who remain with their present employers must be placed on the footing of paid servants, receiving wages at a rate for which a minimum will have to be fixed. Up to the age of 9 or 10, the services of such a girl would prob- ably be adequately remunerated by the provision of board and lodging and I do not suggest any monetary payment in these
cases.
Between that age and 18 wages should be paid at rates to be fixed hereafter-the rate would be more or less nominal up to the age of say 15 and thereafter a sum based on the rate of wages normally paid in households where paid maidservants are employed.
These wages should not be paid to the girl, but should be placed to her credit in a bank and accumulate until she reaches the age of 18 when the accumulations should be at her disposal. Girls above the age of 18 can make their own bargains in regard to wages.
(The ages quoted above are inserted for the sake of illustration. The exact ages and the rates of pay are among the details that require to be elaborated in consultation with the Chinese advisers of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. It will also be necessary to make some provision for seeing that payments to the girls' bank accounts are duly made.)
(e) No girl must in future be taken as a mui-tsai. Mui-tsais already in the employment of families who come from China to settle here must be registered on arrival and treated in all respects in the same way as mui-tsais now in Hong Kong.
(f) No one in future shall employ a female domestic servant, other than one of the former mui-tsais provided for above, below the age of ten years.
(This provision seems to me to be necessary in order to prevent evasion of the law.)
8. Legislation on these lines would, I submit, effect what is required as soon as possible. The status of mui-tsai would be definitely and clearly abolished and no new mui-tsais would be engaged: and the children who are now mui-tsais would become paid servants at the earliest possible date.
9. I should not anticipate that the Secretary for Chinese Affairs would be overwhelmed with applications to find other employment for mui-tsais. The issue of the proclamation directed in your telegram of 21st March* has-contrary to expectation-not resulted in any appeals to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs and I think it may fairly be assumed that the vast majority of these girls are satis- fied with their positions. The fact that they will receive wages will probably decide practically all of them to remain in familiar sur- roundings rather than risk a change to new work. It is possible, however, that in addition to any mui-tsais who may desire to leave their present homes there will be others whose employers are unable or unwilling to retain their services if they have to pay them wages.
but It will be necessary to provide for such cases, in the absence of any indication of what the number is likely to be it is difficult to know what provision to make.
* No.
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